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From: mi@rtfm.ziplink.net (Mikhail Teterin)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc
Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community"
Date: 5 Mar 1997 06:18:30 GMT
Organization: Aldan at Newton Upper Falls
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <5fj37m$oeb$1@kayrad.ziplink.net>
References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <5fhkv5$8vj$1@halcyon.com>
<5fhugj$4q2@paperboy.ids.net> <331CE677.46F5@net5.net>
<331CC20C.4542@fbp-ny.com>
Reply-To: mi@ALDAN.ziplink.net..remove-after-`net'
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Honorable Josh Birnbaum
wrote on 05 Mar (in article <331CC20C.4542@fbp-ny.com>):
=This will be hard to match as you are running on hardware that must be
=compatable with and are built upon 20 year old Intel 8086 architectures
=not to mention the underlying architecture of the system.
=Silicon Graphics workstations are the Mercedes 600SL of computer world:
=-Beautifully engineered.
=-Fast.
=-Reliable.
Overpriced...
=You get what you pay for.
Nope. PentiumPRO-200 with 512 cache, lots of RAM and disks, decent
video will cost you 6-8K$ at most. Add $200 dollars for a commercial
OpenGL X-server from XInside (no hardware OpenGL acceleretion) and
you are in bussiness. You can not even get O2 with R5000 for this
kind of money, and they are slower -- you need a much pricier 10000s
to match...
My claim is based on comparision between the said PPro box runing
FreeBSD and old R4400 SGI workstation, which has 5 times more memory
(I aproximate the speed of newer O2s to the best of my knowledge).
TCL (compiled with ``-O2 -mips2'' flags is 2-2.5 times slower on
our scripts).
Then there comes a choice of add-on hardware (like CD-ROMs, tapes,
etc.). Here SGI will just ripp you off, for "compatable hardware".
Then software. C compiler for SGI costs more then my home computer
entirely, C-compiler (GNU) included. And gcc will not build on SGI
without cc already there. NFS-server is an option too (500-600$).
So is "document processing" package (without it, you can not really
view man-pages you add). No way!!
Yes, Intel stinks in hardware world just about as much as Microsoft
in that of software. Still, SGI has to wise up and restructure
their pricing.
I'd be glad to be corrected here, because I like SGI's support for
development of TIFF, hylafax, InterViews and wish them luck.
-mi
--
"Windows for dummies"